There are many times when I’ve started working with a new client and they’ve told me their dog is not treat-motivated. They won’t eat outside, they won’t take treats. Last week, I had a client say exactly the same.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do any work. She doesn’t take treats!”

Lots of guardians want to know what to do in this case. They want to know if there other magical ways of working that we can use instead?

Some dogs, it is true, are very toy-oriented. For those dogs, it’s easy to sub in a toy instead. The problem is that for many dogs, even their best toy won’t work in the ways their guardians want it to: to build behaviour change.

Not only that, toys can be counter-productive, depending on what you’re doing and depending on your dog. It also may depend on the dog’s age, as dogs get less toy-oriented as they get older. Personally, I love dogs who’ll work for food, and they’ll work for toys, and they’ll work for an enthusiastic ‘What a good dog!’ and a bit of massage and for functional reinforcers. I like my dogs to have a very wide repertoire of stuff I can keep in our toolkit so I’ve got the right tool to build the behaviour I want to see. Toys are great for feeling good, for building up energy levels, for building relationships. They aren’t good for calming dogs down. So if you want calm behaviours, you’re going to have to have a dog who has got a lot of self-control if you’re using toys.

Now of course, that’s possible. But if you’re excited anyway, adding a toy to the mix isn’t going to make it easy on the dog to calm down. That is some high-grade control.

And we’re so human that we can’t steer ourselves away from the fact our words are just not that interesting to a dog. I mean my dogs do seem to like ‘What a great dog!’ but I don’t have to guess if they like steak.

Invariably, ‘dogs who are not treat-oriented’ are dogs who’ve got problem behaviours outside the home, where you’d really like them to be treat-oriented. You know – dogs who pull, dogs who don’t have recall, dogs who frighten old ladies by barking… If you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t care that your dog was not interested in food outside the home.

So what is the problem?

#1 Using low grade food

A very high proportion of guardians who say their dog isn’t treat oriented are using packets of ‘treats’ they picked up from the dog food shelf in the supermarket. Following an accidental taste test, I can confirm that these taste worse than actual dog biscuits. They taste of flour. They’re mealy, chewy, boring versions of Jacobs’ Cream Crackers. Now I love a cream cracker. With stuff on it. Naked cracker? Not so much. Three of them? Pass me a glass of water, please.

A surprising number of humans are also touchy about their dog getting ‘human’ stuff. It’s odd, because ‘human’ stuff is very subjective. I’m a vegan living in rural France. Brains, innards, kidneys, livers, veal, goat, horse, rabbit, duck, paté, tripe, blood sausage, heart and even something called andouillette, which is made with the lower end of the colon and smells like it too. Much of what your average French person considers delectable would turn the stomachs of other nations. ‘Human’ food is a cultural concept that we need to ditch if we want our dogs to find food valuable.

So often, I find that dogs who I’ve been told are ‘not treat oriented’ are actually highly motivated to work for food – when that food is great food. This is by far and away the biggest error I find guardians making – expecting floury baked biscuits with a long shelf life to be as good as something from the refrigerator.

#2 Not having an eating habit

Another reason people tell me their dog isn’t treat motivated is that in fact, their dog is very set in habits determined by their humans. They’re just not used to eating on the move. If we’ve got very set meal times, then we may find our dogs struggling to eat beyond the bowl. They’re not used to snacking. They’re certainly not used to snacking outside the house.

I know how this is. I grew up in the 1970s when eating in the streets in the UK was disapproved of by my grandparents. If you ate outside, you had tablecloths and silverware and goblets (I kid you not) and salt and pepper in Tupperware. And you ate at lunchtime. With cutlery.

Rural France still works on these principles. Sure, people eat on the trot, but traditional supermarkets are empty at lunch time and if you try to get something to eat at 1.30 from a rural restaurant, good luck to you. I know I certainly didn’t snack in the same ways as I do now, or eat on the move.

Having an ‘any place, any time’ dog who has the habit of eating in public is a behaviour you can teach, a habit you can cultivate. If you want your dog to sit and eat treats in the vet, don’t leave it to chance and hope they will. You can start by using the bowl less. I’m not a fan of immediately switching to ‘any place, any time’ with lots of enrichment toys. My nana is in a nursing home and I know how important food rituals are and how stressful they can be when they are disrupted. I don’t want my dogs to be anxious because they don’t know when the next meal will arrive.

Nor do I want dogs who have never had to forage or rummage to have to switch. We have a number of dogs at the shelter who find it impossible to eat outside their normal routine after surrender – simply because they’ve been hand-fed or they expect food at particular times. Some dogs just aren’t even used to a bowl. We have to accept if we’ve got a dog who we’ve turned into a slave to routine that it’ll be stressful to disrupt that. Also, I don’t believe every single thing we eat should be difficult to access or we should have to work for. The relief of just being able to eat is not to be sniffed at.

However, if you’ve got dogs who’ve never taken a treat from you, or who don’t know what food toys are, then a little less in the bowl and a little more in toys can be a start. Then work from there.

Dogs who can eat any place and any time are a gift to train. Just seen a deer? If you can eat, great. In the vet? Great if you can take food. Stressful experience? If you are able to eat, then training can happen.

But we don’t get ‘any place, any time’ dogs without building that skill.

Also, and this is really important, habits are born when we are young. The same goes for our palate. If dogs aren’t exposed to a lot of food when young, you might not be offering them things they find appealing. Sure, this is going to be true for carrots and banana if your dog was a strictly meat kind of puppy, but that can also be true for tastes and textures we would expect dogs to just like, such as steak. There are also dogs who like to savour the good stuff and it is possible to have food that dogs want to enjoy. One of mine enjoys smelling novel foods offered to her and will often go away and eat new things slowly, even if they’re very full of meaty goodness. It’s always worth ruling out problems with the things your dog has been exposed to in their life. I even know dogs who were punished for begging or stealing ‘human’ food who are then frightened by human food. One of my guys was like this: stale baguette was terrifying!

#3 Being in a state of stress

The mammalian body is built with two systems: voluntary actions and involuntary actions. The involuntary bit is split into two: the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. Remember back in high school biology where you learned about homeostasis? The Rest-and-Digest mode? That’s the parasympathetic bit. And Fight-or-Flight mode? That’s the sympathetic bit. Now it’s not like one works and the other stops – more of a sliding scale, but, as Robert Sapolsky says, if you’re a zebra and you’re being chased by a lion, you aren’t thinking of digesting your lunch or where your next meal will come from.

Fight-or-flight mode (well, it’s more complicated than that, but let’s stick with simple for now) can mean you’re in chronic stress – like some of the dogs in our shelter – or can mean acute stress. Dogs in states of acute stress tend not to be eaters. If your dog can normally eat food but when they’re faced with a scary clown, they won’t take a treat, that tells you that your dog’s body is in a state of acute stress. Conversely, chronic stress can affect our appetite. Some people stop eating; others eat more. Fat me is stressed me. I self-medicate with food when chronically stressed. Other people lose their appetite. So you may find your dog snatching and even eating more in chronic stress, but again, if your dog normally has a fairly healthy appetite, then you may be asking too much of them and you may need to put a bit of distance in there before your dog feels interested again in food.

Stress isn’t all bad. Homeostasis, Rest-and-Digest, can be interrupted when we having mating opportunities, when we’re engaged in social activity or when we are on the hunt. Doing exciting things can make us lose our appetite.

Many dogs hit the outside world with the fervor of a kid let loose in a free theme park. It’s all so much fun. It’s all so much more interesting than sleeping on the sofa or hanging around on the patio. Many of us struggle with our dogs because we’re battling with a very stimulating outside world and our dog has no history of focusing on us or eating at such a time, and it also goes against what they’re actually interested in doing. The good thing is that food can be interesting to smell and taste. Theme parks also have busy food stands. There’s no reason an excited dog can’t also enjoy the odd hot dog. That said, if you’re asking for complex behaviours, don’t be surprised if they just can’t do very much. Today, I cued Lidy to ‘touch’ three times. It was too much. I chucked her a treat and said ‘Find it!’ and she could manage that. Touching my hand with her nose was too big an ask. Eating, however, was not.

What happens when we ask for a simpler behaviour is that the dog often then re-engages with us. I asked for a hand touch again straight after and got one. If one thing is too hard, go easy and then build up to the hard thing in progressive stages.

#4 Being sick or feeling unwell

Many guardians fail to recognise that their dog is too stressed to eat and confuse that with not being food oriented. Sadly, they may also fail to do the same with a dog who is getting older or is not well. This can even happen on medication. Some medications upset stomachs, and it’s not a surprise if the dog doesn’t feel like performing for you in return for a snack. If your dog used to be food oriented but isn’t any more, this might be a good time for a check up.

This can also affect their preference for treats. If your dog is refusing one texture of treat, it’s worthwhile trying with another. And just as dogs might not be able to do complex behaviours, I sometimes find that this involves eating itself. The more complex the eating (harder, longer, less appetising chews) can be refused where they’ll still opt for easier eating. If in doubt, I go with potted meat mixed in with gravy so that it doesn’t even involve much chewing.

Of course, if you’re old and your teeth hurt or you don’t want to do what you’re being asked because it’s painful, then you might refuse food too. I see a lot of dogs asked to sit who just feel uncomfortable doing it. Sit is one behaviour I never ask for. My dogs can and do sit, and they do so of their own volition, but I don’t ask for it. We may also need to think about whether our dog is refusing because they don’t want to do the behaviour that leads to the treat. This is never because they’re stubborn. I’d be checking #1-3 first.

A sore mouth, throat, tummy, gut or bum can also lead to a dog who might not eat when they have in the past. Even ear issues can be worsened if you’re asked to chew. Not sure if you’ve ever tried to eat when you’ve got a headache or earache – it’s not the best. Hormonal issues can also play into this, so if got a dog who’s suddenly stopped eating or has gradually lost their appetite, it’s worth mentioning it to your vet.

#5 They’re not hungry

I scoff at this because… dogs… but then I’ve never lived with tiny dogs. Most of my dogs have been 25kg or more and there was always room for a snack. But I should not scoff. I do understand the plight of people who live with tiny dogs whose stomachs are smaller than your average cat’s and who don’t find eating very interesting. One of my lovely friends has a bichon who weighs 5kg. His appetite is poor at the best of times. Tiny morsels of very soft cat food are about the only thing he’ll work for, and only for a short time. Sensitive, small dogs may be more likely to suffer from a full stomach or no real desire to eat. I totally get that. I think we have to use every morsel we can (without putting them under pressure to eat) and keep training to an essentials-only routine.

I can’t say I’ve experienced this one myself, but I’m assured it happens.

#6 You’re asking too much

Many people have shockingly high expectations of what dogs can and will do – particularly for a floury long-life biscuit full of preservatives. They don’t take their time or make it easy enough on the dog. Remember that loose-lead walking and recall can be really tough behaviours to even get right in the simplest of circumstances – walking two metres without pulling, coming back when asked in the garden when there are no distractions. And having done a minimal amount of training, perhaps a couple of days, people then seem to expect their dog to just click. Dogs don’t generalise well, meaning what you do in the home wouldn’t be logical for them to think of doing out of it. The same goes for eating as it does for training. If you only ever ask for a sit and that’s all the behaviour you ever ask for, if you only ask in your home, it shouldn’t be a surprise that your dog doesn’t seem to understand when you ask in the vet surgery.

Make it simple and make it part of your regular routine. Unless you only want the behaviour in a very specific part of your home under very specific conditions, set up a stimulus gradient and help your dog realise that when you ask for a ‘touch’ on a walk, it works the same as when you asked in the car, in the kitchen, in the garden and in Aunt Mabel’s conservatory. When you move to a new place, increase the value of the food again. My dogs may eat the most low quality food simply because I’ve trained them to eat on the go, but if we’re doing hard stuff in new places, the quality of that food increases exponentially.

#7 You don’t have a training relationship with your dog

This is another reason I find guardians may struggle. I’m really proud of the way my dogs can just switch it on, but I do a little training every single day. I ask them for stuff, they do the stuff, I give them food as a reinforcer. They expect this to happen any place, any time. If you don’t invest in training your dog, don’t be surprised when they won’t eat food because they have no idea what your game is. The way we interact is also a reinforce-able, build-able skill. If I want my dogs to interact more with me and take food from me more frequently, well, I need to build that just as I do with every single other thing I teach.

Ultimately though, if you don’t do ninja training – any place, any time – then don’t expect your dog to refuse food.

#8 You serve the food with your hand as a plate

Some dogs do not like hands. Hands are weird. Who the hell made human front legs do what they do? Can you just imagine what that must seem like to a quadruped whose front legs do pretty much what the back ones do? Some hands come with mixed messages. Feeding might be one, but even stroking can be unpleasant for some dogs, depending on how it’s done. Hands may be associated with constraint, with being held against their will, with unpleasant handling and petting. You may see your hands as plates. Your dog may think of them as weird lobster claws. Want to stick your snout near a lobster claw for a block of Dairy Milk? No? Thought not? Also, and I’m not sure how many people factor this in… dogs are mostly long-sighted and the longer your nose, the harder it can be to locate stuff visually that’s close up. If you don’t want to accidentally nip your guardian, hands can be a worry to approach, especially if the guardian doesn’t hold still with the blessed snack.

Also, hands are Dullsville. For dogs who are excited, the biggest game changer outside on walks that I’ve found – the one thing that switches them from ‘not treat oriented’ to ‘snaffle hound’ – is making the food move or making the dog have to find it. Got a scent hound? A beagle? A beautiful bleu de Gascogne? Hide the food and let them use their nose to find it. Take portable snuffle mats out. I promise you that finding a stinky piece of snackage using your great hooter is much more interesting to a scenthound than taking it from a hand.

The same is true for sighthounds and herding dogs – make it move visually! Throw that treat, roll that treat, make the treat have a bit of energy. This is also great for dogs with strong predatory behaviour too. Nothing feels as nice as the grab-bite!

If you’ve got dogs who are heavily into toys and you’d like them to be more interested in food, lotus balls and dummies are great. If you’ve got dogs who are heavily into food and you’d like them to be more interested in toys, lotus balls and dummies are great for that too. Bridge the gap between prey and play, between toys and food, by making the food replicate your dog’s favourite hunting activity.

You also have a little thing called the Matching Law in your favour, as well as the brain’s biology of habit forming. Practise often and you’ll even find that your highly predatory dog (that’d be mine!) will actually stop trying to chase after a deer and will find and eat a dropped treat simply because chasing and consuming a treat is, in some small biological way, like taking down and scoffing a stag. Hunting is not a reliably reinforcing activity. If chasing food is, then you may well find that your insanely high drive, predatory dog actually finds it more reinforcing to chase and eat a snack you’ve tossed across their sight line. And if you use the full weight of habit to help you so that it’s an automatic and instinctive thing to look for and eat a dropped piece of beef, then believe it or not, your dog who isn’t treat oriented because they’re getting all their kicks from the world at large will become a dog who gets reliable kicks from your treat pouch.

#9 You’re expecting Final Boss level and your dog isn’t up to it yet

Life’s challenges can be very much like a video game (See the great book SuperBetter if you don’t believe me). I like to think of our dog’s challenges from that first, early villain they have to defeat on a video game, and their toughest challenge as the Final Boss level. Yet I see so many people dumping their dog in at Final Boss level and the dog just can’t cope (#3 and #6) with low-grade treats in highly demanding situations. If you’ve got a dog who doesn’t like unfamiliar people, then taking them to a café for an hour and expecting them to cope is their Final Boss level. And if you want them to eat, well, they’re still trying to do everything else, not least wonder if they’re safe or not.

In this case, go back down and make sure you’re working at the ‘Goldilocks’ level – not too easy that the dog isn’t learning at all, but not so tough that food is the last thing on their mind.

#10 You’ve wrecked food for your dog

This is where we’ve only used food as a bribe to do bad stuff. The food has come before the bad stuff, and it’s a signal that sets off ‘uh-oh’ alarms for your dog. Like if you only use food when you’re trying to get them to the vet. Or to give nasty pills. If you’ve used food as an incentive or bribe for bad stuff, if you only dig out the biscuits when scary joggers go past, your dog may well see that as a great, big, hairy clue that something bad is about to happen.

So…

If you’re stuck with a dog who you think isn’t treat-oriented, it’s worth thinking of these ten reasons and working out what’s going on. 99% of the time, making it less challenging and adding better food will get you the result you want. However, I do like to make sure I’ve got a dog who’s happy to eat any place, any time. I think it’s essential they’re prepared for my impromptu life skills lessons when and where they occur. I’m also sensitive to their needs. If it’s too hard, I don’t ask. That’s feedback for me to say I need to make it easier. So we do. I’m also conscious there may be things going on beneath the surface if they refuse food where they’d normally take it.

But in sum, if you want a dog who takes food anywhere, you need to build a dog who takes food anywhere, and that is on you, not the dog. It’s very easy for me to be glib about it and tell you to go get better treats, but there are a whole raft of reasons why dogs won’t take treats, many of them interrelated.

With thanks to inspired discussion in the DoGenius Den, especially Rebecca and Nathan.

There’s one thing I’m absolutely adamant about, and that’s not letting unknown people feed fearful dogs. So often, I hear from clients that they’ve got a dog who’s a little skittish around people and they’ve encouraged those people to give food to the dog in the hopes that this will help. These dogs are ‘Stranger Danger’ dogs. They’ve a heightened sense of suspicion over who’s friendly and who’s not. The kind of dogs people say, ‘Oh he’s lovely when he gets to know you.’

Let’s not be encouraging strangers to feed our Stranger Danger Dogs.

There are several flaws in the scenario where strangers hand over treats to your dog. The first being if the dog is genuinely fearful, then food won’t be the first thing on their mind. Imagine the well-meaning but kind of scary stranger as being a walker from The Walking Dead.

Do you feel like taking a cupcake off this guy?

Start imagining your dog sees strangers as zombies and you’ll understand why some dogs really don’t feel like taking a biscuit from him.

And you went better than cheap floury biscuits and asked the stranger to hand over some bits of ham or cheese? Maybe you’ve gone down the route of making it more tempting?

Ok.

If your dog is refusing, that’d be the same as me refusing a block of my very favourite chocolate. That tells you just how scared your dog is.

And if your dog won’t take food from you (let alone a zombie) when the scary humans are around, that tells you something too.

It tells you that your dog is in way over their head and eating is not the first thing on your mind when you’re in fight-or-flight mode.

The person may be the most well-meaning person in the whole wide world. We’ve seen Wicked. We know that Elphaba isn’t a wicked witch, not really. That makes no difference to your dog. No amount of reasoning with them will help them understand that the Wicked Witch Ain’t Really That Wicked.

Your dog is in charge of deciding who they trust or don’t. And if they say they don’t, we’ve got to respect that.

We don’t have to live with it, as you’ll see shortly.

But we’ve got to respect it.

So what if your dog IS taking food from the zombie? From the Wicked Witch? After all, some dogs do.

Sometimes, if the dog is able to, you might see the smash-and-grab.

They dash in quickly, grab the food, sometimes a finger or two in their haste, and only if the food is offered at arm’s length, and retreat to a safe place to eat it. They’re only likely to go in again if food is offered again.

The problem with this is both practical and ethical. On a practical level, your dog isn’t actually learning that the scary human is any less scary, just that they give out cheese from time to time. She’s still the Wicked Witch, just this time she’s got cheese.

On an ethical level, the use of food is forcing your dog into situations they wouldn’t choose to be in simply to get something they really, really want. And that’s coercion. Using food doesn’t make you into a great trainer, a great person or even someone who is innately kind or using force-free methods.

Other people use a lead, a tether or a small space to make sure their dog can’t smash, grab and retreat. This method is known as flooding. You can read more about flooding here and I encourage you to do so if you think it might work. Needs must, from time to time – I’m perfectly aware that when I take Lidy to the vet, I need to use two leads and a muzzle and take a whole pot of paté in with us and even though we manage it with a tucked tail, a few sideways glances and a little growl, I’m absolutely not under any illusion that without the muzzle, the leads and the paté, she’d turn into some kind of Hail-Fellow-Well-Met super-social setter. We’re working on it and I hope one day I won’t have to flood her so that she has no option than to just tolerate it, but inoculations and vet checks are different and they’re her zombie and Wicked Witch Final Boss level in this game called Life, I know that. Just because you’re alright with one zombie doesn’t mean you’re okay with a horde of them – even if they are behind a desk

I simply cannot tell you how many dogs I’ve worked with in the last five years who’ve bitten someone in these circumstances. First time bites – perhaps only-time bites. This well-meant scenario puts dogs’ lives in the balance and runs the risk of some serious medical interventions.

The dog is restrained or trapped. The dog has had to face a number of scary things all at the same time. The dog has thrown out a number of stress signals – lip licks, head turns, shoulder turns, indirect glances, yawns – and they’ve all gone unrecognised by the human approaching them (yes, that includes vets and vet staff!) and then the dog has bitten.

And yet we do exactly this when we put our dog on a lead and ask strangers to feed them. Put the dog up close and personal with their scary stuff and hope that food will be enough to make them feel better.

Now it’s well meant, I know. It’s not a criticism of people’s intentions. Food can change our feelings about things. My own feelings about my lovely grandmother are deeply enmeshed in the fact she is a feeder. Visiting her meant accepting a very large number of snacks, probably at least a pile of sandwiches that could feed twenty people, at least a bit of cake, if not two. Diets died on her doorstep. Willpower crumbled before her. She is cherry cake and lemon cake and salmon sandwiches and petits-fours and M&S crisps and pickled onions and pork pies and Branston pickle and huge chunks of cheese. Food is deeply enmeshed in everything I love about her.

But taking chocolate from zombies is not going to turn them into my grandmother. The Wicked Witch rocking up with a platter of pickled flying monkey brains does not turn her into Elphaba.

Besides the ethics of using food to do this and the practical issues of having a dog start refusing food, there are other issues. Not least the fact that food is a magnet that draws the dog into the space with the human. If you’ve got a smash-and-grabber, hooray. At least they can retreat. But if you’ve got a lingerer, all this means is a highly ambivalent dog is going to end up in the space of a person they don’t like very much for much longer than they would without the food – and when the food runs out and the dog realises they’re a lot closer to the person than they’re happy with, that’s when we can see some nasty bites too. I’ve already had to deal with the fallout of dogs whose food has run out three times this year. If your dog is new to your home, I cannot stress enough the risks of strangers handing food to your dog.

Refusing food from strangers, then, is really not the worst thing your dog can do.

Please do not flood this post with comments about how you’ve used food with hundreds of Stranger Danger adult rescue dogs and they’ve all been fine. I know. We use food liberally at the shelter. I use food liberally with dogs who don’t like me very much and think I’m a zombie. But I know when to do it and how to do it. There are ways and means. And I don’t do this with dogs who have guardians with them. If there is a guardian, it’s their job to dispense the food – not mine. Very occasionally, I might add a bit of food but I hate doing this. I’m very, very aware of all the fallout I’ve just taken you through and I do so with much reluctance – normally because needs must and the owner needs to go faster than I feel like we should. Life is not easy and sometimes needs must. The problem with proliferating liberal advice that strangers should give dogs food is that it is then implemented by people who aren’t aware of the fallout and it ends very badly.

Another part of the problem is that the people who often suggest this are actually not that dog-savvy. Do you know the best place I know of for a dog with a high level of Stranger Danger? People who work with dogs all day long and who know that dogs don’t want strangers waggling fat fingers in their face, who let the dog choose. People who don’t interact with the dog until the dog is okay, who don’t approach the dog, and who are really not that interested in the dog. I’d rather be in a crowd of people who aren’t that fussed about dogs than people who claim they love dogs or that ‘all dogs love them’ – they tend to be all kinds of crazy inappropriate. I know because I am that dog lover who has to consciously myself look at the human, not their dog. I’m crazy inappropriate and I battle it every day.

So what should you do?

The first is that YOU are there with the dog. YOU feed them.

If your dog won’t accept food because you’re too near to the scary zombie, back off to a point where they are able to accept food. Yes, that might be 500m. So be it. You may also need to read my next post about dogs who ‘aren’t treat oriented’ if you’ve got some other stumbling blocks.

You might also need to skill up where your training is concerned.

There is a marvellous protocol from Suzanne Clothier called ‘Treat-and-Retreat’ which uses food in ways that encourages dogs to be confident. Find a trainer who can show you how to do a treat-and-retreat protocol, and get good at it.

Or, drop the food altogether. Some trainers like Grisha Stewart use minimal food in their training programmes like Behaviour Adjustment Training (BAT 2.0) and allow the dog to desensitise to scary stuff without adding food into the mix. Other trainers like Sarah Stremming and Leslie McDevitt use food for training in ever-closer proximity to the scary stuff as if to say, “Yes, there are scary zombies just there, I know, but you and I are engaged in some predictable, fun and highly rewarding stuff and you don’t need to be bothered by them. They won’t hurt you and I won’t let them. We’re doing our own thing.”

And this works wonderfully too.

But the food and rewards come from you. Not the stranger.

So with my Stranger Danger boy Heston, what made the most difference?

Allowing him to go and investigate safe people and then come back to me. I don’t use food. He’s anxious, not hungry. I tell him he’s a good boy and I pet him. I tell him how brave he is. I reassure him and allow him to go at his own pace. When he’s ready, those safe people might pet him too. And he just loves that now. He does take biscuits from people but to be honest, I’d rather he approached them on their own merit. I say this with the heavy irony of being the kind of person who always has dog biscuits on her person and who hands them out liberally.

My other Stranger Danger Dog Lidy is different. She likes structure and predictability. She’s not the kind of dog to investigate. I use food with her as it helps me set up a very structured programme for her.

What your dog needs will be dependent on their needs and their past experiences and their past behaviour. There’s no one-size-fits-all treatment programme for them.

So can you use food with your dog who is afraid of strangers? Absolutely – if it comes from you. And it will depend. It will depend on your dog. It will depend on you. It will depend on the circumstances. It’s nuanced and individualised.

Stranger Danger Dogs need a programme that is right for them with exercises and approaches specifically designed for them. What they don’t need is blanket advice about strangers giving them food – or, worse – throwing the food to them. Unless they’ve got the softest underarm pitch and the most perfect placement, they’re unlikely to be able to throw food in a way that won’t resemble a zombie lobbing a grenade to your dog.

Can Stranger Danger Dogs get over it?

Sure. Heston was very happy to walk through a bunch of soldiers on manoeuvres in the forest yesterday. He didn’t even care they were there. They might as well have been very uninteresting trees. Lidy, not so much. I could pretend she didn’t go into stalk mode and that this didn’t alarm me. We did a few reps of our favourite games and we took our time. I listened to her until she was ready to move on without looking like an Apex Predator sourcing her lunch and she remembered we don’t eat people these days. But by the time we got to the soldiers and their lunches, we walked past as if they weren’t luncheon meat in camouflage at all. Heston said hi. Lidy did not say hi. She stood and glowered a little in the corner like Hannibal Lector in a hockey mask.

What didn’t happen, though, was I didn’t ask those soldiers to hand-feed sausages to my dogs, because even though Heston sees those zombies as people these days, he doesn’t need them to feed him sausages. I gave Lidy some snacks because she was a Very Good Girl to face her zombie foes and it was just another episode in our life-long training programme in which Lidy Encounters Zombies and the Zombies Are Not So Bad After All. No zombies looked at her like they might like to pet her. One day, scary zombies will be the exception rather than the rule, I hope, just as they are with Heston. One day, she’ll realise people are Elphaba not the Wicked Witch. Right now, only she decides when people are okay, and that’s fine. At the moment, we’re at that point in Walking Dead where we’re learning to walk among them without them wanting to grab us and without us needing to kill them. We’re getting good at that. And if any zombie tries to grab her or offer her cake, my job is to say, ‘Not today, thanks! We have cake of our own!’ and to step in rather than letting her have to cope with grabby, cake-offering zombies.

But we didn’t get here by strangers giving dogs treats, by flooding my dogs or by using food when my dogs are clearly telling me the scary stranger is just a zombie in a human disguise. Make sure you’re not setting your dog up to fail and don’t fall for this well-meant but ultimately unhelpful advice.